The Dandelion Project
by Gamemakers
Summary: Peeta Mellark is dead. The body has never been found, but eighteen years after her childhood friend went missing, Katniss has given up all hope. But when a top-secret project brings her to a remote part of Montana, Katniss finds something worlds beyond what she ever expected.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Rated E for violence, language, and explicit sex. Please note that there is quite a bit of potentially upsetting subject matter, including violence against children, body dysmorphia, non-graphic torture, and murder. Stay safe, y'all.

* * *

 ** _July 1999_**

"Is it an elephant?"

Peeta stifled a laugh as Katniss frowned down at the drawing. It wasn't the best picture of, well, whatever she was trying to draw, but the blob on the road looked nothing like an elephant.

"Do you have a guess?" Katniss asked.

He shook his head.

Prim still hadn't given up hope. "A pink elephant. Like in the movie."

"We only have pink and purple chalk," Katniss explained, her words slow and precise as she barely held on to her last scraps of patience. "Everything's gonna be pink or purple. You can't use the colors to try to figure it out." She scuffed out what Peeta assumed were the ears with the palm of her hand, scraping her skin in the process, and added a smaller, triangular pair at the top of the creature's head. "Try again. It's someone or something you know." They didn't usually play with clues, and Peeta wanted to call Katniss out on changing the rules to her own game, but they had already taken four guesses each, and he knew Katniss wouldn't let them switch draw-ers until they got it right.

"Is it Foxworth?" Peeta put forth. Panem High's fox mascot seemed like a safe guess. Just like her picture, it had four legs, a tail, and triangle ears.

"Are you two even trying? It's not that hard. He lives in our house."

"It's Buttercup!" Prim practically squealed.

"Finally."

Katniss passed the chalk to her younger sister, who immediately handed it to Peeta. "You draw."

"It's not my turn."

"I want it to be your turn. You draw better than me." A pout had crept into her voice, and Peeta sensed that they could be dealing with a tantrum soon if he failed to comply. There was no use in arguing anyway. Katniss' five-year-old sister always got her way eventually.

He glanced towards Katniss to see if she was all right with the change, and when all he got was an eye roll, he smiled back towards Prim. "Maybe we can draw together? You tell me what you want, then you can use the pink and I'll use the purple, and we'll have Katniss guess what we're making."

"Okay," Prim agreed. "Cover your ears, Katniss." She scooted over to Peeta, who leaned down so she could whisper in his ear. "I want Buttercup."

"That's what Katniss just did."

"Then she won't be suspecting it." Man, that kid was devious.

"You three had better not be playing on the road!" Mrs. Everdeen called from the house.

Katniss pulled Prim onto the long, scratchy grass that made up the Everdeens' front lawn. "We're not!" She shouted back.

"Katniss, you can't lie to your mom," said Peeta.

She shrugged. "I wasn't lying. We're not playing there anymore."

"And Peeta, your dad called. He wants you home in fifteen minutes for dinner."

"I'll be there!" He stood up and wiped the chalk dust onto his shorts. Mom would be mad about the grey-pink stripes on his pants, but they would come out in the wash, just like they always did. He had given up on trying to keep Mom happy anyway. "Sorry we didn't get to finish the game. See you two tomorrow?"

"Let me walk you to your bike. Prim, go inside."

"I don't have to do what you say."

"If you want to get your chalk back you do."

Prim stuck out her tongue at that, but she did start running up the long gravel drive toward the house.

Katniss waited until she reached the door to turn to Peeta. "Come on, you need to get home eventually." She grabbed his hand and pulled him up the drive to where he'd left his bike earlier that afternoon. It wasn't holding hands, not exactly, but Peeta basked in the way her hand felt around his anyway. "I have a plan for tomorrow."

"Yeah?"

"Come over as soon as you're done at the bakery, and we can go and pick strawberries. Prim still watches Sesame Street every morning, so if we get going early enough, we won't even have to bring the baby. I've got the buckets washed out and everything."

"That sounds fun."

"It's going to be. My dad took me up there a couple summers ago. They have a ton of berries."

"Okay. I'll come as soon as Dad lets me leave tomorrow."

"See you soon."

* * *

The slam of a car door woke Katniss. She moved the curtain out of the way to look outside but in the dark, she couldn't make out anything beyond the dusky shape of the car in their driveway. At the knock, she rushed for the door.

"Don't open it." Mom tied her bathrobe in place and grabbed the rifle from its spot in the kitchen. "Who's there?"

"Haymitch."

Mom turned to Katniss and lowered her voice. "Go back to your room. Nine is too old to be wandering around in your nightdress."

Instead of obeying, Katniss lurked in the hallway that separated the living room and kitchen. If something was important enough to bring Haymitch Abernathy, Panem County's sheriff, to their house in the middle of the night, it was too important for her not to hear.

Mom tugged open the door to reveal Haymitch's tall, broad form. "So, what brings you out here?"

"Good morning to you too."

"Not at two AM, it isn't."

"Sorry about that, but I'm looking for one of Katniss' friends. You seen Peeta Mellark today?" Katniss' ears perked at the mention of Peeta's name. How could Mom have wanted her to go back to bed when the adults were going to talk about her friend?

"He was over here earlier, but I sent him home for dinner."

"When abouts?"

"Maybe five or five-thirty? I don't really remember."

"Shit. Mind if I have a look around?"

"No, go on ahead. Just let me wake up my younger one before you check her room."

"I'll have a look 'round the outside first. Got a lock on your shed?"

"Nah, it's open."

Katniss pulled on her sneakers, not bothering to lace them before she ran after Haymitch.

The sheriff cursed when he stumbled over the warped back deck. He shouldn't have gone out that way. Mom always made them use the front door, said that the rotting deck was going to give out underneath someone someday. Dad was going to fix it last year. He'd drawn up some plans and decided on the pretty red wood they would replace it with and everything. After the accident, when everything else changed, the deck just kept rotting.

She held her breath as she crossed the deck.

"Who's there?" Haymitch turned his flashlight on her, and atniss winced against the binding light. "Didn't your mom tell you to go back to bed?"

"I want to help you look for Peeta."

"You should listen to your mother." There was no real conviction behind his words, and Haymitch didn't stop her when she followed him to the shed. "Hold this for me, all right?"

The flashlight was heavier than it looked. Katniss' arm burned as she trained the light at the latch so Haymitch could open it. It didn't matter that it hurt. If it would help Haymitch find Peeta faster, she would do anything.

The door creaked as I opened, groaning at the use after months of standing still. Something skittered away from the light, and Haymitch took a hesitant step inside. "Flashlight?"

She handed it back to him and followed him into the shed. They hadn't kept chickens in years but the outbuilding still smelled like them. Katniss pulled the collar of her nightdress up over her nose as Haymitch poked through the shed's contents, moving anything big enough for a ten-year-old boy to hide behind.

"Nobody's been in the shed since Dad died. Peeta's not here."

"No, he's not," Haymitch agreed. "Still, I had to check. You got any ideas where I should be looking?"

"No."

"Figured as much." He surprised her then by crouching down beside her, lowering himself to her eye level. "Katniss, if you have any ideas where Peeta might be, I need you to tell me." Haymitch's voice was quiet, and his grey eyes were steady. "You're not going to be in trouble if you've helped him hide, and he won't be either. I'll make sure both of you are taken care of. My job is to keep you all safe, and to do that, I need to know where he is."

Katniss didn't think he could make that promise, because she already felt like she was in trouble, and she hadn't even done anything. "I don't know where he is."

"The two of you are friends, right? He ever mentioned anything about running away? Maybe you two have some hiding places in the woods where he might go?"

"No."

"I only want him to be safe."

"Me too," Katniss said. "Peeta's my friend, and you should be looking for him."

One side of Haymitch's mouth quirked up into a smile, and for the first time, Katniss understood why all of Mom's friends thought he was so handsome. "Then we're on the same team." He stood up and brushed the dirt off his knees. "Let's get this thing closed up and head –"

His radio crackled. "Aabernathy," Haymitch answered.

"We found the kid's bike. It's down by Applewood Creek."

"Peeta there?"

"No, and no bike tracks either, but there's definitely been a car up here in the last few hours."

"Shit. I'll be there in ten." He clipped his radio back to his belt and started jogging toward his car.

Katniss sprinted to keep up with him. "I want to come with you. I want to help look for Peeta."

"No. Go inside. Tell your mom what you heard, and tell her to keep the two of you inside." He pulled open his car door. "I've already got one missing kid to deal with, and I don't want another one."

"Haymitch, please –"

"I said no." He dropped into his seat and put the car in drive, sticking his head out the window to talk to her. "Listen to me, Katniss. The best thing you can do right now for Peeta is to stay out of all this, let everyone focus on finding him instead of keeping you out of trouble."

"But –"

"Promise me, Katniss."

She nodded.

"Good." He started to pull out. "I'll do everything I can for Peeta."


	2. Chapter 2

_In the beginning, there was only pain. Electric blue ripped up his spine. Ultraviolet burned behind his eyelids. Infrared glared, blazing at his fingertips, on his toes, everywhere the man knew it would hurt most._

 _He remembered a time before the beginning, but the memories felt misted over. There was a smiling father, brothers, a girl with dark hair and eyes like a storm, but they were faded, old black and white photographs blurred and yellowed with age. This world, his new world, existed in color, a brilliant spectrum of experience, but underneath it, he felt the shadow. The shadow hurt too, but it was a dull, pale pain, painted in watercolors where his own was etched into his skin._

 _He could feel the shadow boy, sometimes, could taste his fear as his own, felt his own heart race as the man approached his dusty other._

 _Peeta did not know when he became aware of the other boy as something more than an extension of himself, nor could he tell exactly where one ended and the other began. Dreams soaked into his mind as he lay awake, and while he slept, Peeta felt his shadow only more clearly. The boy was scared, as he was, but the man gave him none of the reassurances to which Peeta had become accustomed. While he was told the hurting would stop someday, his shadow knew nothing of his future. Peeta tried to comfort the other boy, tried to tell him that everything would be all right someday soon, but while thoughts slipped into his mind, he found the membrane between them impenetrable from the other side._

* * *

 ** _June 2017_**

 **MISSING**

 **Lavinia Riviera**

DATE MISSING: 10/9/16

FROM: Hesperia, CA

DOB: 11/7/99

HISPANIC FEMALE

EYES: Brown

HEIGHT: 5'2

WEIGHT: 114

HAIR: Red

Katniss stared at the picture of the pretty redheaded teenager, committing the girls' features to memory. As far as she knew, nobody had ever found a missing kid based on seeing their face on a milk carton. She still checked the picture every time. Those kids had nothing; the world owed them every chance it could give.

Satisfied that she didn't know the girl, Katniss tucked the carton back into the mini fridge. "Did you know that we have an all-staff meeting at ten?" she asked her coworkers, already knowing what their answers would be. Beetee and Wiress hadn't bothered to check their daily schedules once in the four years she'd been working here.

"Do we have to go?" Beetee asked.

"Well, it is an all-staff meeting, and we are all part of the staff, so I think that'd be a pretty good bet." Really, if any of them got to be pissed about having to show up to one of Capitol Corp's stupid teambuilding exercises, it was her. She was leaving this afternoon to transfer to another facility and they were still making her go.

"Nine, you said?"

"Ten."

Beetee tugged on Wiress' sleeve. He was the only one who the woman allowed to touch her, and not just the only person in the office. Beetee was the only person allowed to touch Wiress, period. "Did you hear that, Wiress? Ten o'clock meeting."

"Ten o'clock." She didn't look away from her screen. Just like every morning, she had carefully mixed two-thirds of a cup of coffee with two Splenda packets and filled it to the top with creamer, taken one long sip that smeared purple lipstick all over the side of her mug, and set her drink down on the coaster next to her as she booted up her computer. If her daily routine wasn't interrupted, the drink would sit on its coaster, cold and forgotten, until she washed out her cup the following morning.

Sipping her own, thankfully still warm, cup of coffee, Katniss wondered how much more productive she could be if she were so easily sucked into the computer. Thanks to Beetee and Wiress, the small robotics unit of Capitol's Seattle facility could keep ahead of some of the biggest labs in the country. Most days, Katniss felt like she was doing less than her fair share of the lab's work, and some days, she thought her biggest purpose in the office might be making sure the two of them remembered to eat lunch and go home at the end of the day. Which, she supposed, were important functions, just not what she'd earned a computer science degree for.

Wiress surprised her by speaking. "You're leaving today."

"I am."

The conversation ended there. She wasn't sure what else she'd expected.

* * *

This wasn't her fault. She didn't make the reservation. The booking information appeared in her work inbox with instructions on what she would and would not need to bring for her 'extended business trip', she got on the plane it told her to, and now Katniss got to deal with the fallout from showing up four days early. Nobody had ever given her the dates she was supposed to be here. It had all been set up by the Montana office. Why was Adam, the world's least charismatic and most annoyed man, pissed at her? She hadn't wanted to sit around Billings International Airport for four hours waiting for him to show up any more than he'd wanted to spend those same four hours driving down to get her.

He hadn't even tried to talk to her when she got into the car. Maybe she shouldn't have gotten in. Yeah, his license plate matched the one the office had given her when she'd called them after finding nobody waiting for her, but this Adam guy they'd sent to pick her up was seriously weird. But a serial killer would at least be happy to see her, right?

She wished she hadn't changed into her heels. Capitol wasn't a particularly strict workplace, and Katniss had never seen evidence of an enforced dress code in any of the offices. There was no reason she'd had to change, and now, she couldn't run even if her life depended on it. On the bright side, the four-inch heels might make a good weapon. Checking that Adam wasn't watching her in the rearview mirror, she slipped off the shoe, testing its weight in one hand. Not as good as her pepper spray, but if she had to, Katniss could make it work.

She couldn't show her concern. "Have you been living out here for very long?"

He didn't take his eyes off the road. Didn't turn his head either. "Several years."

"Do you like it? It's a very pretty part of the country."

"Yes." Wasn't dying to divulge anything more than she asked, was he?

"I haven't spent much time out here. I drove through when I moved out to Seattle, but I didn't stop. Kind of feel like I missed out there. Think I might try to come out here and do some hiking sometime." This might mark the first time she had ever been the chatty one in a conversation. Never mind, she worked with Wiress, so that wasn't quite true, but at least her coworker just tuned out when she had decided to be done with a conversation. Maybe Katniss had just gotten used to it, but being left hanging felt a lot more natural than only having direct questions answered. "Do you hike much?"

"No."

She was tempted to see if she could Twenty Questions her way into some juicy information on the top-secret project she was working on, but something told her that would be even less appreciated than her attempts at small talk. "Should I let you focus on the road?"

"Yes."

"All right, then." She probably had thirty emails to answer anyway. Beetee and Wiress were terrible about replying, so everyone CC'd Katniss on every communication to her group. She didn't expect that to change just because she had been reassigned a few hundred miles away. And it wouldn't hurt to let Haymitch know she had met her ride. Katniss resisted the urge to curse as she dug through her carryon for her cellphone.

The second she found it – wedged up in between pages of her brand-new planner and bending the pages, of course – it was snatched out of her hands. "You can't have your phone at the facility."

"Sorry?" That definitely had not appeared on the list of things to avoid bringing.

"Snow's orders."

"Well, I haven't seen anything secret yet, so I don't see the harm in letting me have my phone until we get there."

"Snow's orders," the man repeated. Could he sound any more like a movie villain's henchman?

She wanted to give him a piece of her mind, but Katniss didn't want to upset her higher-ups before she even showed up.

"Fine," she huffed. If Snow wanted to pay her to sit around reading a novel, she supposed that was his prerogative. Her e-reader probably fell into the same category as her iPhone, so one-handed, she dug through the depths of her luggage for the romance she'd been lugging around for months.

Katniss' other hand still rested on her high heel, just in case.


	3. Chapter 3

How did he think Katniss was going to keep all of this straight? So far, they had only been to Katniss' small apartment, a conference area, and the phone room, and already her head was spinning with all the rules she would be expected to follow. Absolutely no camera use. No zip drives. Never go anywhere without your identification card. Only enter the phone room if the people already inside work on your project.

She understood some of them. Others made Katniss question why she had agreed to come here in the first place.

"Good afternoon!" The greeting reached them mostly as an echo, but there was no missing the warmth behind it.

Finally, someone who wasn't annoyed by her presence – yet. Adam tried to press on, but Katniss stopped and turned towards the voice.

She spotted him at the end of the long corridor. Broad-shouldered, right around her age, nice smile, and looking at her like she was the most interesting thing he'd seen all day. If he hadn't been blond, she might have gotten butterflies. Instead, her stomach twisted in a way that had become all too familiar over the past eighteen years.

"I thought I heard two sets of footsteps. How are you doing, Adam?" Though his words were addressed to Adam, the man's eyes never moved away from Katniss as he moved towards them.

"Fine."

"Glad to hear it. I thought the rest of the crew wasn't coming 'til next week?"

"They aren't," Adam replied darkly.

Time to step in. "There was some miscommunication, and I showed up a couple days early." That was all she needed to say, but the words just kept coming. "Wires getting crossed and all that, you know."

"Well, I'm glad you're here." Finally, he reached them, and as he extended a hand, their eyes locked.

All the air was sucked from the room as she looked into those oh so familiar blue eyes. His next words came to her as if from a far distance, and she hardly registered them.

"Peter Miller."

* * *

"It's not him." The woman in the mirror didn't look convinced. "It's not. Peeta's dead."

It was the name that was throwing her off. It had to be. She had seen dozens, maybe hundreds, of blonde, blue-eyed men over the years and hoped they were Peeta. But none of them had sent her to a mirror therapy session with herself.

"Peeta's dead," she repeated.

And he was, even if nobody had ever recovered a body. Search crews had combed every nook and cranny of Panem, sent out cadaver dogs, had put up thousands of posters all over West Virginia begging for any information on Peeta's disappearance and still found nothing, but all that meant was that the body was hidden somewhere clever. People didn't turn up eighteen years after going missing. It just didn't happen.

Except when it did. Katniss watched the news. She heard the same stories that everyone else did. But there was a reason the media loved those stories so much: they were miracles. And much as she wished things could be different, miracles didn't come to poor kids from Nowhere, West Virginia.

"Peter Miller. Pe-ter Mill-er." She'd hoped it wouldn't sound like Peeta Mellark when she said it like that. It didn't work.

Dear god, she needed to call someone. Katniss didn't have that option because phone use within the compound was limited to a monitored shared space, but mirror therapy wasn't cutting it today.

She couldn't think about this. She was going to drive herself crazy. Katniss pushed a rogue piece of hair back into place and looked straight into the mirror.

"You still need to unpack. Just keep busy, Everdeen."

* * *

Katniss had never thought of herself as a people person, but once she unpacked her bags, she wanted nothing more than someone to talk to. Maybe it was that there was nobody here that she could have a conversation with. Adam wasn't the talkative type. Peter? Absolutely not. He brought up too many emotions that she didn't care to deal with right now. She probably wouldn't be able to avoid the man forever, but she wasn't going to seek him out.

Instead, she found herself wandering through the corridors. Katniss intended to follow the tour Peter and Adam had taken her on earlier, and she managed to find the kitchen and one of the courtyards before she became hopelessly lost.

She grazed her fingers along the wall as she walked. The wall shifted from granite to metal to a dark, opaque glass and back again as she continued, each one as smooth and cool as the last. Katniss had not seen a window in ages, and she had not taken any of the many staircases she had come across, but she was a miner's daughter, and her intuition told her she was now underground. She must be far away from her room by now. Nothing here looked familiar, though really, this place threw her off so much that even the areas she knew she'd visited before felt alien.

When she heard footsteps, she instinctively froze. It took her rational mind a moment to realize how stupid that response was. A week early or not, she had been invited here, and to the best of her knowledge, everything she had accessed was a public area. Even if they weren't, it wasn't as though she was poking at computer terminals searching for trade secrets.

"Uncanny, right?"

Katniss jumped at the voice just behind her.

"Sorry," Peter said. "I thought you knew I was there."

"It's all right," she replied automatically. "I was distracted."

 _And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better_. He had changed into a forest green sweater just tight enough to show the well-toned arms beneath, and Katniss caught a hint of musky, woodsy cologne.

He joined her at the window. "I think Adam does that to most people."

 _You're right, Mr. Miller. Right now, it's_ Adam _that's distracting me._

Time to focus. "He's the project, isn't he?"

"The project?"

Did he really not know? "The one we're supposed to be working on, the secret one. It's Adam, isn't it? When I met him at the airport, I thought it might be shyness - I mean, we both know there are a lot of pretty weird people in computer science, it wouldn't be that surprising - but the more I see of him, the more I think it's more than that. I think we're here to see how long it takes us to realize he's a robot."

Peter laughed. "Then I guess you can go home. Project finished."

"Well, isn't he?"

"Between you and me," he began, his voice low and deep in a way that made Katniss want to lean in closer, "I think you might be on to something."

Katniss' eyes narrowed. "You know exactly what's going on. You just don't want to tell me."

"Can I say that you have excellent intuition?"

"You aren't going to tell me."

Peter grinned. "If you let me show you around, you can try to weasel information out of me."

He offered his arm, but Katniss hesitated. "Adam's already given me the tour."

"But if I know Adam, he's only shown you the essentials. I'll take you to the fun stuff."

 _Keep it together, Everdeen._ "I suppose I can't say no to an offer like that."

"That's why I made it."

* * *

 _It was a long time before the man made a mistake. Peeta at first assumed that his door had been left unlocked as a trick, a test that he would be punished for failing if he left, but the longer it sat open, the more tempting it became. The other boy felt so close, and it had been so long since Peeta had seen anyone but the man that he could not resist the urge to wander beyond his room. The glowing red eye above his door brightened as he stepped outside, but he paid it no mind._

 _The hallway was made of glass, so alien from his little white room-world, and had he not been intent on his mission, Peeta would have stopped to marvel at the universe of browns and greens spread before the window. But the other boy was close, near enough that Peeta could hear his own footsteps echoing back at him through another mind, and he had to keep going._

 _He found himself huddled in the back corner of a room the perfect twin of his own. The boy's soft, peachy skin was more familiar than his own cool, grey covering. Though Peeta owned a mirror, had seen his own reflection thousands of times, he still half-expected to see those blue eyes in the place of the black pinpricks that sit where his eyes ought to be._

 _"Hello." The shadow boy flinched, and Peeta knew that he was hideous in a way the golden boy he saw in his mind's mirror could never be._

 _"I want to be your friend," Peeta pressed. He remembered friends, in that blurry way that he remembered taste and smell and music, but he wanted the kind of memories that he could touch._

 _He heard the other Peeta's answer before he spoke it. "I'm not sure I want to be yours."_

 _"I already know you. I like you."_

 _"I'm afraid of you."_

 _"Don't be. I won't hurt you." He knew too well what it was to be hurt to ever inflict pain on another. "Have you seen the green?" He had, of course, for Peeta had sat in the other one's memories of wrestling in patches of verdant green with his brothers, of evergreen trees as tall as the sky, but he did not want to scare his friend._

 _His eyes sparkled. "Can you take me into it?"_

 _"I don't know. I can try."_

 _The shadow Peeta stood up. The boy peeled the sticky white electrodes from his forehead and wrists, revealing the red-brown burns beneath, and Peeta recognized the scars as his own, though no such marks marred his smooth metallic shell. Peeta held out his hand, and the other boy accepted it. Touch lit up as brilliant blue as electricity, but with none of the pain, and he gasped._

 _"Did I hurt you?" Now, the shadow boy glowed as golden as the sun._

 _"No. You're nice."_

 _He smiled. "You too." Hand in hand, they stepped outside. Three walls of cool, smooth glass, and beyond it, the forest spread as far as they could see. Both pressed their noses to the glass, but only the other boy's breath fogged it._

 _"I don't think he wants us to go outside," the other Peeta said._

 _"I want to go."_

 _"Me too."_

 _The air was crisp, and Peeta tasted leaves on the breeze. He closed his eyes and inhaled as much of it as he could, storing every sensation for when he would again be trapped in his lonely cell._

 _"It's autumn," the other boy explained. "But it's early autumn. That's why some of the leaves are red. More will turn later."_

 _"I like autumn."_

 _"I think you would like all the seasons."_

 _"Probably. But I like autumn the best, just like you."_


End file.
